Not Your Kind of Trouble
by Marz1
Summary: Bobby says its not a gremlin, and that we're idiots." "What did he say about the military guys?" "He said to send him a postcard from Gitmo." Sam and Dean get caught between the N.I.D. and a girl that shoots lightning, an angry clone, and the FBI.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate. I don't know Supernatural. Duh.

Author's Note: This is set in season two of Supernatural, and season nine of Stargate SG1.

**Not Your Kind of Trouble**

**By Marz1**

**Chapter 1: Found**

Cassandra Frasier sat at the small sticky table, stirring her coffee and waiting on her last hope.

He was late, but she could probably afford to be patient. She'd taken her temperature that morning, and there were still no signs of fever. It couldn't be the Mind-fire again. It couldn't be.

_Yeah_, _Right_, she thought, something else caused every monitor in the student computer labs to explode. It was just a coincidence that it happened right after the one she was using swallowed up her term paper an hour before it was due. There had to be some other explanation for the weird snapping feeling inside her head as everything started to smoke and spark.

Normally she wasn't a drama queen, but the paper was half her grade, and the professor had said no extensions. She hadn't meant to freak out, but she didn't try not to. She didn't think there would be consequences besides her own embarrassment. And then glass was flying everywhere.

It could've been worse. No one else got hurt. They'd all been smart enough to run when their monitors started to smoke. She wasn't hit in the eye at least, and her professor had granted her an extension after she got the paramedic to walk with her to class and bear witness to the explosion. Having blood soaked bandages on her arm and face didn't hurt her cause.

She'd tried to call Sam about it, but the relay officer in Colorado told her Colonel Samantha Carter was on a mission and out of communication, which meant off world. The same went for Daniel Jackson and Teal'c. She tried to call Jack O'Neill, but couldn't get through. He was somewhere on earth, but he was in some kind of fate-of-the-world meeting.

She knew Jack would do whatever he could to help her, but he had whole world problems to worry about. The secretary promised to pass on Cassandra's message to General O'Neill. But Cassandra had left the message vague. She wanted to talk to someone, she didn't want to be dragged back to the lab, especially since everyone she really knew there was gone. Since her adopted mother's death she hadn't kept in contact with the medical personnel, and she didn't like being poked at by strangers.

She also knew if she went to the lab, they'd find something.

She knew because the day after the computers blew up, her cell phone fried, and her roommate's microwave, and then the entire electronic card key system for the dormitory.

There were police walking around the campus now, investigating. For now it was just local cops, who seemed to think it was some dumb prankster giving them an excuse to look at college girls whose mothers' weren't around to make them dress decently. But if she didn't get this under control, the SGC was going to notice sooner or later. Hopefully before the N.I.D. did if it came to that.

She'd borrowed a few dozen heavy magnets from the physics lab and spent every minute of privacy she could spinning them to use up the charge she'd built up. She considered spinning one under the table but decided it was too much of a risk in the coffee shop.

She lifted her arm to check her watch. She'd bought it that morning because she didn't have time to get a new cell phone. She was rather glad she hadn't spent the money. The watch was dead.

_I'm not going to make it_, she though, putting her head down on the table.

She was already getting behind on her homework. She didn't know how she could finish any of her assignments if she couldn't get near a computer. Maybe she could get someone to write her a doctor's note, or break her arms or something, something to keep her from flunking out of school so she didn't lose her scholarship. She knew it was stupid to worry about grades when she was turning into a human radio transmitter, but she did. She wanted to be normal. She heard the café door open and looked up hopefully.

A big guy walked in. He looked maybe college age, but he also looked like he should be walking into a run-down bar, not the Java Bean Boutique. He had on a worn over sized leather jacket, jeans and biker boots. He was clean shaven but his short spiky hair didn't scream professional, nor did the ancient walkman he was carrying.

The biker boy flirted with the cashier as he bought a couple of coffees, and managed to get a free cookie and a napkin with a phone number written on it. He walked all around the coffee shop before picking a table right next to hers. He smiled at her and nodded. She did her best impression of Teal'c, raising an eyebrow and watching silently until, hopefully, he looked away.

No such luck.

"You waitin' for someone?" he asked.

"Yes," Cassandra said.

"Boyfriend?" he asked.

She said "yes" again hoping to shut down further questions, but that didn't work either. He started going on about the school, and how he was thinking of transferring from Junior College and what did she think of the dorms. He just went on and on. She tried to keep her responses to an absolute minimum and considered pretending she couldn't speak English. She was pretty much tuning him out until his last question cut through.

"Hey, you were in that computer lab that blew up, weren't you?" he asked.

"No, I wasn't," she answered automatically.

"You weren't?" the biker boy said. He looked at her suspiciously, probably noticing the cuts on her face.

"I've never been in a computer lab," Cassandra said. "I'm Amish."

"You're Amish?" the biker boy asked.

"Yep," she said. It was even sort of true. Her family had lived in a village where levers and looms were the highest technology. It was not that her people didn't like technology. It was just that their "Goddess" Nirrti forbid them from developing it.

"I thought Amish people couldn't drink coffee or wear watches or have anything that wasn't in the Bible," the biker boy said. "Jesu Cristo, and all that."

He was grinning even as he argued, but his eyes were making her nervous. She felt like they were having an entire second conversation right under the first.

"All that stuff is in the Bible," Cassandra said.

She wondered if she should just make a run for it. If this guy was working with some spy organization they might have more goons and a van waiting outside. Then again he could be stalling her and waiting for back up.

"What part of the Bible mentions coffee?" the biker boy asked.

"It's on page 758," she said. "Why don't you go look it up? There's a great book store about a mile that way. How about you start walking?"

"But I'm having such a good time here," he said.

She considered throwing her coffee in his face, but it had gotten cold, so that wouldn't give her much of a head start. She looked toward the front door, willing her contact to walk through. The door swung open. Her hopes were dashed again.

It was a giant in a polo shirt. He had kind of shaggy hair and was carrying a laptop. He might have been a student, but Cassandra had a bad feeling about him too. He looked like a student, but he walked like a soldier.

The guy looked around the room and his gaze settled on the biker boy. Polo giant looked from the biker boy to her and back again. She thought she saw biker boy nod from the corner of her eye.

_Should I run for it?_ She wondered again. If she did it would be hard for her to find her contact again. She didn't want to risk going back to her dorm. She'd have to find a pay phone and hope she didn't fry it, so she could set up another meeting. A shadow fell over her.

In her moment of distraction the giant had moved. He was standing over her table looking down at her. She realized he must've said something.

"Sorry, what?" she asked.

"I was wondering if I could snag this chair?" he asked, pointing to the other seat at her table.

"Sure," Cassandra said. "Have them both."

She got up, abandoning her cold coffee on the table. She bumped another table on her way to the door, knocking a girl's chemistry flash cards to the floor. She bent to pick them up but the giant in the polo shirt called after her. She shouted sorry at the girl and ran for the door. She heard chairs sliding, heard people getting up and yelling. The lights started to flicker.

The door bounced off the outside of the building as she stumbled onto the sidewalk. The neon sign on the store front exploded. People dodged the flying glass and sparks. She heard feet pounding on the pavement behind her. She sprinted for all she was worth.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Yeah, I know. I have the attention span of a goldfish. So here's a crossover that got stuck in my head. I don't think it will go much more than 40,000 words. And yes I am still working on my other stories. If you leave a review, please leave a review for this story. Thanks for reading.


	2. Chapter 2

**Not Your Kind of Trouble**

**Chapter 2**

Sam Winchester stood outside the coffee house with a girl's jacket in his outstretched hand.

The girl it belonged to was running full tilt down the sidewalk. Sam thought he would be able to catch her, but the street was crowded and he wouldn't have time to do much if he did get her. Considering he didn't even know if she was the culprit or the victim, he decided now would not be the best time to run her down and gank her.

He checked the pockets of the jacket. He found tissues, and a couple of large magnets, which Sam transferred to his own pockets. There was no I.D., and nothing of a supernatural nature. He shook glass out of his hair and walked back inside. The Barista was staring at him, so Sam slapped on a sheepish smile and brought the jacket to her.

"That was weird," Sam said. "I guess she might come back for it."

"I'll put it in the lost-and-found," the Barista said.

Sam returned to his seat, doing his best to appear confused and uninvolved. Dean gave him a look, which Sam interpreted as let's-go-before-the-cops-come, but he shook his head and Dean didn't argue, or get up and walk out, forcing Sam to follow. The brothers did their best to appear normal. They talked about some stupid horror movie Dean had made them watch, which Sam argued was misogynistic, but Dean said it couldn't be, because the only one to escape was a chick.

Sam heard the Barista talking on her phone to her manager, but unless she triggered some kind of silent alarm, she hadn't called the police. After a few minutes of making excuses in a high nervous voice she hung up, and came around the counter with a broom, dustpan, and tape. Dean got up and offered her a hand, so he could double check for evidence before it was swept up.

Sam pulled his laptop out of its bag and turned it on. Despite the sticker advertising it in the coffee shop window, his computer couldn't find any wireless network in range. Sam wasn't exactly surprised. A creature that could blow-up whole computer labs would probably have no trouble with a finicky internet connection.

It would also explain Dean's static-filled, barely audible phone call telling Sam where to meet him. Of course that could have been due to Dean's reluctant to say he was going into the Java Bean Boutique. Dean sat down at their table a few minutes later, with the free coffee the Barista had given him "for being so helpful".

"No sulfur," Dean said in low voice, while looking past Sam at the Barista. His brother kept flashing crooked smiles at the girl, and Sam had a very mundane premonition about spending the night locked out of their hotel room. "And she didn't react to 'Cristo'," Dean continued. "Whatever she is I don't think she's possessed by a demon."

"A poltergeist maybe, or a ghost that hates technology?" Sam said.

"She said she was Amish," Dean said. "Maybe she's being haunted by an Amish ghost."

"That would be a first for us," Sam said.

"Yeah," Dean said, "And we don't even get to wear those hats and punch a tourist in the nose."

Sam tried to imagine Dean interacting with the Amish and his head nearly exploded.

"So why'd you follow her in the first place?" Sam asked.

"She walked by me while I was checking out the campus, set off the e.m.f. detector like nothing I've ever seen," Dean said. "And you saw what happened when she freaked out."

Dean set the walkman/e.m.f. detector on the table. The smell of burned plastic momentarily over-powered the smell of coffee.

"Are you sure the flickering lights weren't what caused her to freak out?" Sam asked, as Dean popped open the walkman casing and used his pocket knife to pick out a few melted components. "It could have been an apparition behind us or something else we just didn't see."

"Don't think so. No cold spots," Dean said. "She was setting off the e.m.f. detector when I sat down next to her, and nothing much happened when I tried to get her talking, but there was a big spike in e.m.f. when I mentioned the computer lab that blew up. It was going off the scale when you came towards us, and it blew out completely the same time the neon light above the door did. Whatever this is either she's doing it, or something tied to her is doing it."

As he spoke Dean took a small bag of spare parts from his pocket and started repairs. Though he often played dumb, Dean probably could've gotten at least a Masters in electrical engineering. Not that their father would have let Dean pursue higher education. He'd had all three of their lives planned out, all the way to the end apparently.

Dean snapped the casing closed and looked up at Sam with a grin. The grin vanished when he saw Sam's expression. Sam did his best to shake off that train of thought. Even though their father had been dead for a few months, thinking about him still left Sam's gut twisting. But it wouldn't do anyone any good to get angry about it now.

Sam took out the magnets and set them on the table. "These were in her jacket. Are they setting off the e.m.f. detector?"

Dean waved his walkman over it. "Not much," Dean said. "Definitely not what I was hearing from her."

"Alright, I'll head for the library and hack student records-"

Sam cut himself off as Dean's eyes shot to the entrance. Sam turned just enough to see the door.

A guy in a suit walked in. He had one of those fancy secret-service ear-pieces, with the cord snaking down into the collar of his jacket. He also kept his sunglasses on as he approached the Barista. He could not have been more obvious if he had FED stamped on his back.

The Suit asked the Barista something in a low voice and showed her a piece of paper. She pointed him towards Sam and Dean. Dean's right hand disappeared under the table. Sam did his best to check the exits without giving himself away. The Suit did not look worried, so Sam guessed that paper was not one of their wanted posters.

"You were speaking with this girl?" the Suit asked, holding up a picture.

It was a blown up photo copy of either a drivers license or a student I.D.. It was a little grainy but it was clearly the girl who had run from the coffee shop not ten minutes earlier.

"The cashier said she was sitting at that table, and that you spoke to her," he said. "What was the nature of your conversation?"

"How about you show us some I.D.?" Dean said.

The other patrons and the Barista were all watching now. The Suit took out an I.D. and flashed it too quickly to read.

"Sorry, forgot to put my contacts in this morning," Dean said. "Let's see that again in slow motion."

The Suit curled his lip in annoyance, but he brought the I.D. out again. Sam half expected it to say "Bikini Inspector" as some of the Winchesters fake I.D.s did. Instead it said "Department of Homeland Security, Special Agent Ernest Carson".

"Ernest?" Dean said with a smirk. "You don't look like an Ernest. Did your mom consider Steve or maybe Francis?"

Sam struggled to control the urge to kick Dean under the table. He still had trouble understanding how his brother's mind worked. The Winchesters were wanted for murder in one state and murder and armed robbery in another. They weren't guilty of either crime of course, but the police weren't big fans of the-shape-shifters-framed-me defense. And Dean still felt it necessary to antagonize everyone with a badge.

"What was the nature of your conversation?" Ernest the Suit repeated.

"Why do you want to know?" Sam asked. "Is she in some kind of trouble?"

"She's wanted for questioning relation to a computer security breach," the Suit said.

"She's a hacker?" Dean asked.

"That's classified," the Suit said. "What was the nature of your conversation with her?"

"I hit on her, she said she had a boyfriend, and she left. She must've had a bus to catch," Dean said.

The Suit turned to Sam.

"I didn't really talk to her," Sam said. "I came in as she was leaving."

The Suit stood there staring at them for a moment. Dean looked back with a smirk. Realizing he wasn't going to scare any details out of them, the Suit turned and marched out. They saw him talking into his sleeve as he marched away down the sidewalk. He wasn't going the way the girl had gone, but nobody felt like correcting him.

"Weird," Sam said.

Dean just nodded.

Sam now wished he had chased the girl while he had the chance. If the girl was already on some kind of government watch list it would make their job a thousand times harder. And if she knew she was being followed, any address listed in student records would probably be abandoned. A grid search of the campus and town with e.m.f detectors was probably their best shot now. Sam ran the plan by Dean, who nodded agreeably and got up.

"I'll meet you at the car," Dean said, brushing past him with a cocky grin on his face.

Sam was going to ask Dean if tracking down their lead wasn't a little more important than flirting, but Dean was already back at the counter, muttering something in the Barista's ear. She was blushing and giggling. Sam huffed and headed for the exit.

He barely avoided running into a teenage boy charging in the door. The kid's feet skidded on the floor, and Sam was forced the throw his arms up and sort of hula around the kid to avoid a collision. The kid didn't quite avoid Sam's feet though and ended up tripping. He managed to regain his balance after a few hopping steps, finally stopping when he caught the edge of the counter. A few patrons in the coffee shop clapped.

"Sorry," Sam and the kid said at the same time, thought the kid had a lot more trouble gasping it out.

Sam guessed the kid was maybe fifteen or sixteen. Acne stood out on his chin and forehead and a little bit was visible through his close cropped light colored hair. His clothing was a little too big for him, like he was hoping to grow into it any day now. Not only were the kid's clothes too big, they were more than a little geeky. He wore a Wormhole eXtreme t-shirt, under an oversized olive jacket with a Bob's Bait-and-Tackle logo on the pocket.

The kid was sweating and he had a backpack on that must have weighed at least half as much as he did. The way the bag clanked led Sam to believe it wasn't just school books in there. The kid looked around him, eyes scanning every face in the coffee shop almost professionally. Apparently not finding who he was looking for he turned to the Barista, fishing a photo out of his jacket pocket.

"Have you seen this girl in here today?" the kid asked.

Sam and Dean both got a look at it. The boy and the e.m.f girl stood on either side of a petite smiling middle-aged woman. The two younger people were wearing garish-crocheted Christmas sweaters, and trying to look enthusiastic about them.

"She ran out maybe twenty minutes ago," the Barista said. "The cops were in here looking for her too."

The kid's mouth formed a thin line and his eyes got just a little bit scary.

"Was it a uniformed police officer or just a guy with a badge?" the kid asked, stuffing the picture back in his pocket. Sam saw there was something penciled on the back of the picture, but it was gone too quick for him to read it. He thought Dean might've seen it from his angle though.

"The guy had an earpiece, a suit, and a badge that said Homeland Security," Dean said. "He looked official, but didn't act it. He was a tool and everything, but he didn't even ask which way she went."

"Which way did she go?" the kid demanded.

"Why do you want to know?" Dean asked, smirking a little.

"She's my friend and her life is in danger," the kid said. "And I don't have time to screw around, so tell me."

Sam watched the kid and his brother glare at each other. He didn't know how Dean was going to react. Dean didn't respond well to orders, or to bitchy teenagers. A combination of the two might set off a pissing contest of epic proportions.

"She went east, up the street," Sam said. "She left her jacket behind."

"Is there a note or anything like that in it?" the kid asked.

The Barista checked the pockets and shook her head. The kid took a piece of paper out of his pocket and scribbled a few lines on it. Sam couldn't see what he wrote, but Dean once again, was in a position to see it. The kid handed the Barista the note.

"Can you put that in the jacket in case she comes back for it," the kid said. His words were a request, but his tone made it an order. "And if someone else comes in with a badge, you might want to call up the local P.D. and ask for the interagency liaison. They can tell you if the guy waving the badge is a real cop or just someone with photo-shop skills."

"What's going on?" the Barista asked.

"Beats the hell out of me," the kid said, before turning and heading for the door.

Dean shot Sam a look. Sam nodded.

This time they were following.

* * *

Author's Note: Blarg!


	3. Chapter 3

**Not Your Kind of Trouble**

**Chapter 3**

Jack took out his cell phone as he ran. He left gasping messages for every SGC member in his phone book, but apparently everyone was off-world, or in a meeting, or dead. He did not say much besides "Cassandra Frasier is in danger, call me back," but everyone from General O'Neill to Sergeant Siler got a call. He supposed he could call them all again when he had details, but back-up in the immediate future looked very unlikely.

Next he tried phoning in to the Cheyenne Mountain switchboard. He got through to lower level personnel at the base, but most of his passwords and direct access had vanished when he'd given up his name, rank, serial number, Simpsons' DVD collection, fishing gear, truck, house, and bank account so he could became a high school student again. There were a lot of days when that did not seem like such a good trade off.

The officers he spoke to said they'd pass his message up the chain, but they didn't sound too sincere. They might just be assholes, but it was more likely that some world was about to come to an end, maybe even Earth. Balanced against that, one person in unspecified danger wasn't going to get top priority.

Jack's battery was dying as he got to the end of his contact list. He tried Cassandra's number one last time, but it just went to her voicemail, which was full now, probably with his other messages.

_Why did she call me?_ He wondered for the millionth time.

They weren't on the best of terms. Dr. Janet Frasier had invited him to a Christmas Eve dinner shortly after he was forced to start his life over again. The Doc was one of the few people from the SGC who treated him like they actually knew him. Cassie Frasier was not.

She acted like he'd gotten himself cloned and thrown out of his old life so he could follow her around at school, even though she was a Senior at the time and he was a Freshman and they had no classes in common. They had crossed paths on one awkward occasion. He had asked her "How's it going?" as he passed her in a hall. She'd ignored him completely, even after one of her friends said "that kid was talking to you."

He knew something was very wrong when Cassandra had called him at 11 O'clock the night before and begged him to fly out to her college. He forgot about the hurt feelings and rudeness. He remembered the little girl who lost her whole family, the girl he'd bought a puppy for, who wanted to talk to him and him only when she was scared.

Cassandra had begged him not to call the SGC, and insisted that it was "not that kind of problem", but she needed him to come meet her right away. She was so panicked he'd agreed to it, despite the fact that he had a pre-calculus midterm the next morning.

He had to admit there was some ego involved too. He thought maybe she had called him instead of General Jack O'Neill because she thought he was more likely to understand. He should have realized he was a last resort.

Jack had tried calling her back that morning but she didn't answer. She didn't respond to email's or text messages either. So he called the secretary at Rocky Mountain High School and told her he had the flu. That was one advantage of being an emancipated minor; you could call in sick for yourself. He just hoped no one went to his apartment.

He spent the cramped, overpriced flight trying to think of reasons why Cassandra would call him and insist he come in person without telling him why.

**Trap** was his first thought.

His knowledge of the Stargate program was a few years out of date, but it was much more in depth than Cassandra's. If they wanted information from a source who might not be missed, they could have put a gun on her and made her call him. He thought Cassandra would try to give him some clue if he were being lured to his death. He hadn't noticed one.

_Am I getting paranoid or rusty?_ he wondered.

The second reason would be someone from the military was pushing her around. If they had a higher rank than General O'Neill that might cause her to call him, since he was outside the chain of command. Of course there was pretty much nothing he could do about it if that was the case.

After that he was stuck with more mundane problems. Maybe she was failing her classes and couldn't get up the nerve to tell Carter. Maybe she had a pushy boyfriend. Maybe she needed bail, though that wasn't too likely since she'd ask him to meet her at a coffee shop.

He then had one very terrifying notion. What if Cassandra wanted someone else to tell Samantha Carter that she was a grandmother? That thought made Jack's brain hurt. He had been hanging around gossipy high school kids too much.

The plane ride hadn't really led him to any answers, just cramped legs and a sour stomach. The ride to the campus was worse.

He found a cab right away but the driver tried to scam him, saying there was an extra $20.00 baggage fee and a $10.00 airport tax, and a whole bunch of other bullshit that would have made the 15 mile car ride almost as expensive as the damn plane ride.

Jack knew if he was still his old self, no one would try to pull that kind of crap. He was in a hurry and he knew there would be trouble, but he still argued, eventually threatened to call the manager of the cab company. The driver had peeled away from the curb leaving Jack with no ride, and none of the other cabs would come near him.

Eventually he talked his way onto a shuttle bus full of Chinese tourists and got as far as the university, but that was still a few miles from the coffee shop. One of the few advantages he had over the old Jack was two fully functional knees. He got his bearings and ran.

He was late, too late, but the Barista and two guys at the coffee shop had given him some insight into the situation. Cassie was being followed by someone with a homeland security badge. Jack had missed her by twenty minutes.

It still didn't explain why she called him instead of armed Air Force, but at least he knew it wasn't going to be a horribly awkward personal problem, just fighting an evil government agency. Of course he had no weapons on him, since he was stuck on a commercial flight, and no one would believe he was old enough to buy weapons in any case. All he had was some camping gear and a few items from the hardware store that could be…repurposed. He could provide a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, but against loaded guns he would have significant trouble.

He'd given the map of the campus a cursory once over before getting on the plane, go he knew where Cassandra's dorm was. He didn't think she would go back there though. From the way she'd run, it seemed she knew she was being followed.

They hadn't arranged a fall back spot or anything like that. He'd have to find her based on what he knew of her. They'd played hide and seek a lot when she was a kid. He knew she favored the outdoors over building and tended to run up hills if that was an option. It wasn't a great start, but he found a couple drinking coffee on a bench, and after showing them the picture of Cassie they had pointed him in the right direction. The bench people also hadn't seen a guy in a suit, so Jack assumed he was still ahead of him. A homeless guy by an overpass pointed Jack toward the industrial park across the highway, and Jack gave the guy 20 bucks not to mention that to anyone else.

He jogged into the industrial area, but from there he wasn't sure where to go. He passed a couple of fast food joints, but they all had big windows, and he didn't see her sitting inside. He passed a few workers going in and out of fenced in yards, but none of them hand seen her. He couldn't guess where to go from there, and decided he'd go back to the overpass, since Cassandra would probably have to go back across there if she decided to go back to the campus.

He hiked up his pack and started back. The pack was pretty secure but it still rattled as he ran. It wasn't much noise but he blamed it for not hearing his pursuers sooner. It was hard to pick out with all the construction and destruction noise going on, and whoever was shadowing him was good. Eventually he singled out two guys. They were far enough back that he couldn't get a direct look at them without being obvious, but he was certain it was the two guys from the coffee shop who had pointed him after Cassandra in the first place.

Jack considered trying to take them out, but they were probably armed and if they could fight as good as they could shadow, he'd be completely out of luck. He could run into one of the lots and ask the workers to call the cops for him, but considering Jacks current apparent age, he'd probably just end up being sent to a truant officer, and he couldn't think of many plausible excuses for being three states over when he was supposed to be at home with the flu. He'd just have to lose them.

He looked for a building to run into and double back out of, but he saw something even better, or at least less expected. There was a 50 foot long driveway leading down a man made box canyon with twelve foot high solid wooden fences on every side. The gate at the end was closed.

The paving was pretty half-assed, leaving a yard of loose sandy soil and clumps of weeds on either side of the cracked asphalt. And at the base of the fence, about halfway down the driveway, there was a depression. As Jack jogged towards it, he saw it was just barely deep enough to hide a body in.

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**Author's Notes:** I know it is a little repetitive, but I wanted to put different perspectives in for all the main characters. Those awaiting Dean shall find him in the next chapter. I hope I can do him justice. It's 90 percent complete, so it shouldn't take me more than a million years to post. Don't forget to review.


	4. Chapter 4

**Not Your Kind of Trouble**

**Chapter 4**

The kid was fast, sneaky, and hyperaware. Dean would have bet the last of the gas money the kid was raised a Hunter. Of course Dean hadn't heard of any kiddy hunters running around. Ellen Harvelle had implied John Winchester's method of parenting was pretty rare. The few Hunters that had living children usually kept them away from the monsters until they were at least old enough to shave, instead pulling them out of summer camp too shoot Wendigos.

Dean considered the picture and the note he'd seen the kid write in the coffee shop. That was an unusual stroke of luck, and if the kid had paid any attention to Sam or him, he would have thought it was some sort of set up.

The Christmas picture had given the girl a name.

_**Cassie, the Doc and me, 2005**_

The note had named the kid, or at least given them something to call him.

_**Call me or go to the nearest Air Force Base and wait for things at HWS to die down.**_

_**-at least one Jack**_

He thought "Jack" might be some kind of Air Force slang, or maybe that was just "Ace". Dean didn't really keep up with things involving planes. The kid was the puzzle piece that fit the least into all of this. He supposed a military brat could probably learn to track as well as a Hunter could. He wondered what he would say to the kid if they did have to talk. Maybe he would make that Sam's job.

He looked over at Sam, plodding along slightly behind him. He knew this case was bugging Sam, but he was the one who found it in the first place. It seemed like a simple haunting on a college campus. Of course the last of time they thought it was a simple haunting on a college campus it turned out to be a Trickster with a mean sense of humor. They'd ganked that sucker so it couldn't be him again. But now things were starting to look equally screwy.

And to top it all off he probably wasn't going to get to see the cashier from the coffee shop naked.

"It's all your fault," Dean reminded his brother.

Sam rolled his eyes.

They followed the kid across an overpass into an industrial park. There were a few cars and a lot of eighteen wheelers, going in and out of lots with high fences. The kid had managed to get a couple of blocks ahead of them, and they couldn't close the gap without being obvious. The kid turned down the fenced in driveway to a…gravel factory. Dust poured over the fences and the sound of heavy machinery was deafening. Dean got to the corner and peered around.

He saw nothing.

Well, not technically nothing. There were fences on three sides and the dirt and the asphalt and the sky. There was no kid though. Dean supposed it was possible the kid jumped a twelve foot wooden fence. That was getting into their usual territory at least.

Dean muttered "son of a bitch" and gave the fence a kick. They could climb it, if Sam gave him a boost and then Dean pulled him up, but they could hear people shouting to each other on the other side. There was no way in hell they'd get over unseen.

"I don't hear anyone yelling at the kid," Sam said.

Dean nodded. So did that mean the kid hadn't jumped into one of the occupied yards? Or did it mean the workers just didn't see him. Dean took out the e.m.f. detector, but there was nothing going on. The kid hadn't ghosted through the fences at least.

"You want to loop around and see if he comes out the other side?" Dean said. "I'll wait here in case he doubles back."

"So I run some more and you stand here?" Sam asked.

Dean quirked and eyebrow and raised a fist. Sam raised his as well, holding it over the palm of his opposite hand. Three strikes later Sam's mouth dropped open in astonishment. For the first time in a decade, Dean chose paper and won.

"You always pick scissors," Sam said.

"I'm a strategic mastermind," Dean said.

Sam huffed. "Call me right away if anything comes up."

"Don't get all clingy," Dean said.

Sam jogged away. Dean stood watching the driveway. A truck rumbled past, but didn't turn. More dust blew and the fences creaked. Something wasn't right, but the part of his brain that knew what was wrong was keeping to itself. What Dean did know was that Sam was going to pick rock.

Dean walked the length of the drive again and pushed at the gate, but it didn't budge. As he turned back around, motion caught the corner of his eyes. It was gone before he could focus on it. His hand drifted toward his gun, but he thought better of it as another truck drove by. The sounds of construction might mask the noise, but the fence probably wasn't thick enough to stop the large caliber bullets Dean used.

He crept toward where he thought he'd seen movement. More dust and small rocks bounced in the breeze. He saw a dark spot in the dirt by the edge of the asphalt. There was a small hole, barely big enough for a gopher. Next to it was a small piece of glass…no a mirror.

He leaned down to pick it up. Even as he reached for it his brain screamed that putting his body off balance to collect a shiny object was a bad idea. He saw something move in the gopher-hole: human fingers.

He stepped back, reaching for his gun. The ground exploded upward and a hand clamped onto his pant leg and pulled. Dean's arms shot out to break his fall, but he still landed on his ass. Pain shot from his tail bone up to his neck.

The kid stood up, shedding a tan sheet of plastic and layers of dirt. He yanked on Dean's leg again, but was forced to let go as Dean kicked his hand with his free foot.

Dean went for his gun again, but the kid whipped the plastic sheet around, and tossed it over Dean like a net. Dean swung his arm to bat it aside, belatedly realizing it was one of those $1.00 rain ponchos they sold at camping stores. It still fell over him and covered his face. A second later a knee came down on his stomach.

He fought down the urge to vomit and grabbed at where he thought the kid would be. He got a hold of him and rolled over, trying to pin him down. For a second Dean thought he had him but the kid kept them rolling and Dean felt rope digging into his biceps and back.

The kid slipped from his grasp and the rope chinked tight, pinning his upper arms to his sides, and securing the poncho over his head, leaving him blind and choking on the dust that was trapped under it. He coughed as he scrabbled for the rope with his forearms, trying to get free.

Dean expected the blows to rain down, now that he was mostly incapacitated, but they didn't come. He paused for second straining his ears, wondering if the kid had just run off. Then there was a tug at the small of his back, and Dean realized the kid was trying to grab the gun out of his waistband. Dean planted his feet and flung himself backwards.

He slammed into the kid, who let out an "uffff!" as Dean squashed all the air out of his lungs. He wasn't so deluded that he believed he was winning, but Dean thought he was pretty close to getting the rope loose when a big-rig blasted its horn. Dean tried to roll toward the fence, hoping he wasn't about to get crushed into paste.

"Hey you! What the hell are ya doin'?" a woman called. "Get away from him!"

Dean heard a door clank open and running feet.

"Yeah, you better run you little punk!" the woman shouted. "I got my belt halfway off!"

Dean was jerked around as the rope was pulled loose. The poncho was yanked up over his head and he came face to face with a female version of Bobby Singer. Bobby was an old Hunter. He was slightly overweight and wore plaid shirts, worn jeans, an old baseball cap, and a scowl on his gray-bearded face. Bobby and the woman could have been twins if Bobby shaved a little better…and had boobs.

"What the hell's going on here boy?" she asked, pulling Dean to his feet and slapping at his arms and back, to punish him or to get dust off, he wasn't sure.

Dean saw no sign of the kid. He stepped away from the woman before she noticed the gun that was about ready to fall out of the back of his pants. He really needed to get a holster.

"I got jumped by a fricken' Boy Scout is what," Dean said kicking the poncho. "He threw that over my head and started going through my pockets."

"You want me to call the cops?" the woman asked.

Dean tried to look like he was thinking hard about it. "Naw," he said finally. "That kid was half my size. I'd never live it down. I'm late for work anyway."

The woman shrugged. "Suit yourself."

Dean muttered thanks again as the woman walked back to the road and climbed into her truck. The rig coughed to life and rolled onward. Dean kicked at the poncho again, but it didn't turn into smoke or do anything besides flutter back to the ground. Dean looked at the depression the kid had been hiding in. He didn't see any goo, shed skin, or sulfur. There was just a hole and a sinking feeling that this kid was better than they were, at least when it came to hide and seek.

Dean looked at the boot prints that hadn't been obliterated in the short struggle. He and Sam had been inches away from stepping right on the kid and he hadn't twitched. The kid just buried himself alive and waited.

Dean's phone buzzed and he pulled it from his pocket.

"Anything yet?" Sam's voice called. "It doesn't look like there's anywhere to go from here."

"The kid was still here," Dean said. "He ran off."

"What? You said you'd call!" Sam complained.

"Just get back over to this side," Dean said.

His younger brother came jogging up the driveway a few minutes later.

"What happened?" Sam demanded, his face scrunched up and worried. He looked like he might be considering trying to brush more of the dirt off Dean's clothes. Dean gave him a warning glare.

"The kid didn't get over the fence. He was hiding," Dean said, kicking the poncho again and pointing his foot towards the hole.

Sam inspected it for a moment, probably coming to the same conclusion as Dean. Or maybe not.

"So the kid just popped up out of the ground and kicked your ass?" Sam asked all traces of worry gone, and a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"He surprised me," Dean said.

"Getting your ass kicked by a kid half your size would be surprising," Sam said, smirking.

"My ass was not kicked," Dean growled. "He momentarily got the upper hand, and then a civilian came along and he bolted."

"Did you see which way he went?" Sam asked.

"No."

"Did he say anything?" Sam pressed.

"We were fighting, not talking."

"So…what now?" Sam asked.

Dean growled again. "Shit, I don't know. I'm gonna go back for the car. That kid runs too fricken fast."

Sam nodded, he was red faced and sweating too. He shifted his shoulder bag. "You want me to go with you or do you think he'll come back through here?"

"He might, but I don't want you trying to take him by yourself. Seriously, who fights with a poncho and rope?" Dean demanded.

Sam shrugged, still smirking a little. "At least he doesn't have a gun…yet."

Dean glared again.

"There were a couple of fast food places by the highway. See if you can find an internet antenna thing there and start looking for information on those kids in the University records," Dean said.

"Alright. If I find a _wireless network_ and get any information I'll give you a call," Sam said.

Dean made a face. He would've thought of the right word if he'd cared to. This whole case was getting weird fast, and if the Fed's were hanging around it might be better to leave this…whatever to a Hunter less wanted for felonies in multiple states. No one had been killed yet, or even seriously hurt. Maybe it would be ok to let this one go for a while until the heat was off.

_You don't abandon a hunt. You stay 'til it's done. _His father's gruff voice growled in his ear. Dean shook himself and set off. It was a half hour jog back to where they'd started. He was sweating and the dirt that had gotten down the back of his shirt and pants in the fight, was making him itch like crazy.

The Impala had been assaulted by birds while they were away. Dean eyed a half dozen pigeons lounging on the awning of a café across the street, no doubt waiting to see his reaction. Dean controlled the urge to take the gun out of his waistband and shoot their smug little heads off. He grabbed a water bottle out of the back seat and some old takeout napkins and did a quick spot clean. He gave the birds a final death glare before getting into the driver's seat and peeling out.

It was only a few minutes' drive back to the industrial park. He circled the area where they had lost the kid, but he didn't see anything new. He saw the female trucker again, idling outside a lumber yard. It inspired him to give the real Bobby Singer a call.

Dean typed Bobby's number into his phone, but nothing happened. He looked at the little screen, which said "call lost". Its signal strength was down to no bars. He grabbed another one from the glove box, and found it equally dead. He was digging for a third throw-away phone when a blaring car horn forced him to focus on the road. He jerked the wheel to the right and avoided a collision with a convoy of black SUVs. They looked like cop cars, but none of them bothered to pull him over for reckless driving.

He watched them in the rearview as the convoy of vehicles pulled to a halt in front of the driveway where he and the kid had mixed it up. As if they'd practiced the choreography for months, the doors of the SUVs all swung open and a dozen guys in suits and wrap-around sunglasses stepped out.

Dean wasn't entirely sure, since they all had similar haircuts, coloring, and build, but he thought Agent Ernest was among them.

When he was sure they weren't going to jump back in their cars and follow him, Dean headed back to the strip of fast food places. He would never admit out loud how relieved he was to see Sam sitting outside on the curb with a takeout bag and a cardboard caddy with two drinks in it. Instead he said "That better be my food."

Sam threw him the bag and climbed in. "No one around here had Wifi, but I talked the girl at the Burger Bar into letting me plug into her router."

Dean raised an eyebrow and smirked at Sam's word choice.

"Dude, shut up," Sam snapped.

"Didn't say anything," Dean said. "You were careful right, with all your _antivirus _protection?"

"That was lame," Sam huffed. "Anyway, I found the girl's info. That name you saw on the back of that photo panned out. 'Cassie' is Cassandra Frasier. She's 19 and an undeclared sophomore. She lives in the dorm where the key cards all broke, and there are a couple of work orders in for her room. Apparently the circuit breakers keep tripping and all the light bulbs keep blowing out."

Dean took a look in the bag. "You got me a fricken veggie burger?"

"No that's mine," Sam said. "You've got the fat pig special with extra lard. Look under it."

"Being kind of a Bitch aren't you?" Dean asked, tossing the hippie burger at Sam.

"Read the box. That's what it's called," Sam said. "Cassandra Frasier has been orphaned a couple of times. Her birth parents were killed in a car wreck in Canada, but the accident reports and records from that all look a little fake. Her adopted mother, Dr. Janet Frasier was K.I.A. two years ago, and the file on that is still sealed. Her guardianship was then transferred to a Colonel Samantha Carter, an Air Force physicist who is still her emergency contact, and if the Colonel can't be reached, the school is supposed to contact a Major Davis, in Washington."

Dean was looking at his burger box. It did say Fat Pig Special, with extra bacon, but nowhere did it mention lard. "So maybe the girl just had a jammer or some other high-tech junk."

"An emf generator strong enough to blow out light bulbs would be pretty big," Sam said. "She didn't even have purse with her."

"Maybe she had it strapped on under her shirt," Dean said, turning on the engine and throwing it into reverse while juggling the burger between his hands.

"Her shirt was pretty form fitting," Sam said. "I don't think she had any kind of machine on her."

"Her pants were pretty form fitting too," Dean said, his expression getting a little vacant.

"Would you stop already!" Sam said. "Watch the road!"

"So if she's not a hacker anarchist, what is she?" Dean asked. "You don't think it could just be some kind of machine, some weapon she stole or something? Because that would explain all the government goons who drove past me."

"I think she might be a gremlin," Sam said.

"Whu?" Dean asked around a mouthful of bacon.

"A gremlin, a creature that hates and destroys technology," Sam said.

Dean snorted and managed to move the half chewed bacon to one side of his mouth so he could talk. "You mean a "there's something on the wing" bad Shatner gremlin? An Amish ghost is way more likely. Gremlins aren't even real. Remember the plane crash case? That was a demon."

Sam huffed. "You said she didn't react like a demon. I think she's something new."

"Did you find anything on the other kid?" Dean asked.

Sam shook his head. "All you got off that note was that he signed it "Jack" right? That's not much to work with."

"So nothing?" Dean asked.

"I know he's not a student here. I looked through all the Jacks and all the Johns and Jonathans too. He seemed too young for the university anyway," Sam said. "Also she and the boy are not friends on any of the major social networking sites."

"You had time to buy lunch, hack the school files, and hack her spacebook page?" Dean said.

"That's not what it's called," Sam said. "And yes. But what I really wanted to get into were the files for her guardian, Colonel Carter. Unfortunately the Air Force has much better firewalls than the FBI."

"What? You think some Air Force chick saw a monster on the wing of her plane and decided to take it home and pay its college tuition?" Dean asked.

"I don't know," Sam said. "Maybe. Maybe we can get Ash to get the info."

They already owed the mullet sporting hacker like 10 cases of PBR, but Dean shrugged. There were worse things to buy with fake credit cards. "If you've got a phone that works I'd say call him."

Sam checked his own phone, and his huff let Dean know it was dead too. Dean mentioned how his phones had crapped out as the SUV's drove by.

"No phone calls then," Sam said. "You think she's doing it?"

"No," Dean said. "The phones worked when we were tracking the kid. Maybe the Fed's shut down the cell towers."

"They can't just shut down cell towers like that," Sam said. "They'd need court orders and the local P.D. would be involved. No agency has that kind of authority."

"Oh yeah, I forgot that cops always follow the rules," Dean said.

"So what do you suggest?" Sam asked. "Do we stake out her dorm?"

"Maybe later. Get your e.m.f. detector out. We'll drive around and see if we find any spikes," Dean said.

"What if we don't?" Sam asked.

"We follow those SUV's and wait for them to find something." Dean said.

"I don't like that plan," Sam said. "That's a bad plan."

"You're a bad plan."

"That doesn't even make sense!"

"Eat your hippie burger," Dean growled.

Sam made loud cow noises as he munched away at his lunch. Chomp, smack, Chomp, smack. Dean tried to chew at a matching volume, but couldn't pull it off. Sam did notice his attempt, and chewed louder. They both had their faces stuffed to an unreasonable degree when Sam started shouting.

"Hurph!" Sam said suddenly. "Ook!"

"Muh?" Dean asked.

Sam gulped and choked down the last bite of his burger. "Look!" he said, pointing to the rearview.

One of the SUVs was cruising along about a block behind them.

"Uck!" Dean said.

Sam nodded in agreement.

**-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-**

**Author's Notes:** I'm not happy with the ending of this chapter, but if I pick at it anymore I'll never post. Review if you dare.


	5. Chapter 5

**Not Your Kind of Trouble**

**By Marz1**

**Chapter 5**

Her shoes were not meant for running, and her heels were rubbed raw and bleeding. Cassandra crouched by the dumpster, peering out through the fence. She could see the entire length of the block through a splintered slat. At the moment it looked clear all the way from Road 123 (doubtlessly so named in some great bout of creativity) to the corner of Ave J16.

She had ID'ed three different black SUV's circling her hiding place. They all had Illinois plates. She couldn't keep whole plate numbers in her head; the first couple of digits were not too much of a challenge. 4B, 6A, and 6T had kept her pinned down for the last two hours. They could not know for sure she was there, or they would have gotten out to collect her. She could only guess at how they knew she was in the area at all.

Maybe the best strategy would be to just wait them out. They probably didn't have enough people for a grid search, so the patrols made sense in the short run. But did that mean they'd eventually run out of gas or draw attention from the local cops and give it up? Of course, they could just be waiting for back up.

It was getting harder and harder to stay put, even though she knew the sun would set in less than an hour. She chewed her lip. Since it was an industrial area it was probably a ghost town at night, but she thought it would be easier to get back across the highway in the dark.

_'Cause it looks like help isn't coming to me._

She wondered if she should be mad at clone Jack or scared for him. What would these people do if they caught the clone? Would they realize who he was?

_What will they do if they catch me?_

Another SUV rolled into her field of vision, and stopped. It was 6A. The driver didn't bother to pull into the curb. He just stopped in the middle of the street like he owned it. The doors swung open and two men in black suits stepped out. They didn't come running at her dumpster with their guns drawn, but they moved to her side of the street. Unfortunately they did not discuss their evil plans, or talk smack about their slave-driver Go'auld boss or their malicious NID supervisor.

They walked out of her line of sight and she considered their car. If she broke in and found alien technology or something, she'd have a better idea of where to run, and if they were dumb enough to leave a zat on the back seat…

She crab walked around the dumpster, peeked up and down the street, and then ran to the SUV, never coming entirely out of a crouch. She was tugging on the door handle before it occurred to her there might be a third or fourth person in the car. She froze, heart racing, but nobody opened fire. The door was locked, of course. She circled around it and rattled all the handles just to be sure.

She didn't know how to pick locks like Sam Carter, but if a little zap could kill a cell phone, maybe a bigger one would open an electronic entry system. All her poking and rattling hadn't set off any alarms. She decided to give it a try. She put her hand on the door and focused. She didn't know what frequency the electric locks worked on or what frequency she was producing, but when you've got a hammer all your problems look like nails. Her fingers twitched as something in her head snapped.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

The horn blared and the headlights flashed. The engine roared to life. The SUV shuddered, but they'd left it in park, so it didn't speed away. The roar of the engine echoed off the surrounding buildings and made their windows rattle. Smoke poured out of under the hood. The doors remained locked.

"HEY! FREEZE!" a voice behind her shouted.

She turned and ran.

She thought for a few minutes that she had lost them, scrambling under a fence and sprinting across an empty lot, but as she climbed to the top of the fence on the opposite side, 6T turned the corner and screeched to a halt. Her arms shook as she tried to change directions and go back into the lot, but her hands were sweaty and slipped. She fell. It was only eight feet, but she didn't manage to get her feet under her and landed in a wheezing heap on the asphalt. She got up, chest still aching and airless. It took a few staggering steps for her to notice she had lost her right shoe.

She heard the fence rattle and saw two suited goons swing over the top of it. She ran, and they shouted at her to stop again, but they hadn't shot at her yet, so she ignored them. She went right down the middle of the road. She moved away from the empty lot towards a group of large brick factories, hoping to spot an alley or an open door.

She heard the doors of the SUV creak open as well. She didn't really have a plan anymore, just the animal instinct to flee and sour adrenaline to keep her moving. She expected a flying tackle to slam her into the ground at any moment. Maybe they thought she'd collapse on her own and save them the trouble.

4B turned onto the street a couple of blocks ahead of her, cutting her off. She knew it was hopeless, but she kept running towards the oncoming SUV. She looked over her shoulder. The men were jogging after her now, not bothering to close the gap.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

Another SUV turned on the street behind 4B, horn blaring and lights flashing. It looked like 6A had joined the party as well. The doomed feeling deepened, but she was viciously glad they couldn't get the stupid horn to stop. 6A's engine was still roaring and the driver seemed to be having trouble keeping it on the road. 6A swung wide left and then right, suddenly speeding up as if it were going to pass 4B.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! CRUNCH! POP! PING!

Cassandra flinched as 6A slammed into the side of the other SUV. She scrambled for the sidewalk as the two steel behemoths bounced against each other, swerving all over the street. She pressed herself against the door of one of the factories, the locked knob digging into her back.

Glass and plastic smashed and metal shrieked. 6A swung out and slammed into the other SUV, pushing it against the wall of the factory. Bricks crunched but 4B kept moving forward, trying to push back, until its front right tire slipped over the edge of a recessed stairwell. The SUV tilted up on its front end, slamming it against the side of the building. 6A kept going, roaring away from the wreck. 4B stayed balanced on its nose, leaning against the factory.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BFFP! BEEP!

As SUV 6A passed her, Cassandra saw Jack through the smashed driver's side window. He didn't look at her. His eyes were focused on the men who'd been chasing her. They turned and tried to run back to their buddies' car. They didn't make it.

Two of them pulled their guns and fired on Jack's SUV. He spun the wheel and the SUV swung wide, one went down under the wheels and the rear of the car clipped the other. He went flying. Jack hit the brakes and did a U-turn. His car was drawing fire from the two men from 6T, but he paused long enough open his door and snatch up a gun, dropped by one of the men he ran over.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

He sped back to her, and behind his car she could see the men from 6T getting back in their SUV to give chase. Jack was almost to her when he braked suddenly and veered off. She started moving away from her door, confused.

The new black SUV missed her by inches.

She stumbled backwards and fell to the sidewalk again. The new SUV slammed head on into Jack's already dented car and the two vehicles bounced off each other in another spray of metal and glass. Jack's SUV had taken the blow mostly on the front passenger side, and his car had spun away from her, so she had to run around the new SUV, R7 she noted, to get to him.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

The engines in both cars had died, but now both of their horns were beeping plaintively. Both were leaking gasoline and smoke poured up around the crumpled hood of 6A. 6T screeched to a halt next to the wrecks, the last SUV standing. More men in black suits hopped out of it, shouting.

Cassandra made it to the driver's door of Jack's SUV, but when she looked in through the smashed window, she didn't see him. For a moment she wondered if he had somehow been thrown from the car, and she turned to look around at the street.

A man in a suit stood behind her, gun pointed right at her face. He had blood on his chin and looked more than a little rumpled, so she figured he had just gotten out of the nearest wreck. He bared bloody teeth at her.

"You goddamn better not-"

Jack appeared between them.

_He's still shorter than me_, she thought, wishing her brain would give her something more useful.

Jack's left arm snapped out, pushing the suit's gun away. Jack fired his own pistol right under the man's chin. Cassandra heard herself scream, but later couldn't recall hearing the sound of that shot. Jack yanked the gun from the dead man's hand before he even hit the ground. He shoved it into her limp grip and hauled her by the elbow around the SUV. They had the wall of one of the buildings on one side and the car on the other, giving them a small, almost triangular space to hunker down in.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

Jack held up a broken-off side mirror to look over the hood. He seemed to be counting and then sprang up and fired. Someone yelped.

"They're splitting up," he said to her, and then pointed toward the narrower side of their almost-triangle. "If anyone comes from there, shoot them. Safety's off."

She nodded and he turned his back on her, leaning around the car to shoot at the other men.

BEEP! BEEP! BANG! BEEP! BANG! BANG! BEEP! BANG! BEEP!

She shuddered, the adrenaline that had kept her running seeped away and the gunfire and the damned car horn made her want to curl up in a ball with her hands over her ears. She couldn't, though. She couldn't just quit. Jack had come through; even if he wasn't the real Jack, she couldn't let him down. She held the gun pointed towards the end of the car.

She saw the shadow before she saw the man. He was in a low crouch, too, and his gun came around the side before the rest of him. Her aim was not great, but there were only five feet between them. The shots seemed simultaneous, but he fell and she did not. She scuttled forward and snatched his dropped gun. The man she had shot lay on his back looking up at the sky. There was blood on his neck, just above the collar of his shirt.

She had seen dead people before. She had once been the last living person in a village of 200 corpses. It wasn't something she had gotten used to, though. And there were at least three others like this man, out in the road. The sudden fresh violence of these deaths made her feel dizzy and ill on top of her current state of exhausted terror.

She turned to look at Jack, to ask how many were left, how many before this was over. She saw him on the ground clutching his leg. She scuttled over to him. The shot had gone through his thigh, and both sides of his pants were bloody. He still had his gun in one hand and was doing a less than great job of putting pressure on the top of the wound with his forearm while his other hand was clenched underneath.

She shucked off her shirt and twisted it up, and then wrapped it around his leg. Jack pulled his hands out of the way and she pulled it tight. He managed not to scream but the sound that came out between his clenched teeth was unpleasant. She didn't remember dropping her two guns, but they were on the ground at her feet. She picked them both up and fired a few rounds over the hood of the car without looking. She didn't expect to hit anything, but someone shouted, though probably he was just warning the others back.

"How many are left?" she asked Jack.

"Maybe three," he said. "I think I winged another one, but they're wearing vests. Cassie, I want you to…when I say…I want you to sprint over to the other car over…there…I'll keep them busy here…"

His eyes were glazed and for a moment he seemed to lose his train of thought. "Over there…" he started again. "Did I say three?" He shook his head, trying to clear it.

Cassandra fired over the hood again. The gun in her left hand clicked, empty and she dropped it. The one in her right hand was almost as light. She checked the clip; one bullet left. She picked up the mirror and looked over. One of the suited men was lying face down, the others were out of sight. When she looked back at Jack, he was slumped against the side of the car with his eyes closed. He was still breathing, though.

She was not sure what the other part of Jack's plan was, but staying put seemed like a bad idea. She wrapped her arms around his chest, keeping her gun in one hand. She stood up, and nearly fell over. He was still shorter than her, but he was ridiculously heavy. She half-carried, half-dragged him towards the other wrecked car he had pointed out. She hoped he'd wake up and tell her the rest when they got there. She heard a loud crackle and the sudden heat on her back told her Jack's car had worked its way from smoke to flames.

They were three steps from cover when two more goons in suits stepped out behind her. She whirled and brought up her gun, not quite sure which of them to aim it at. Jack twitched a little. His chin was digging into her collar bone and his blood was soaking through her pants. She was going to drop him if she didn't get her other arm involved, and to do that she'd have to put down the gun.

"Drop it!" the shorter goon ordered.

"You drop it!" she snapped.

"If you come with us and behave, we'll drop your boyfriend off at the hospital. Keep this up and he'll bleed to death," said the slightly taller goon in the black suit.

She did not believe him, not for a second. Half their friends were dead, and they'd probably been plotting to vivisect her even before she and Jack had pissed them off. The two were close enough that she could tell they were not Go'auld, but that did not mean they were not working for one. She supposed it didn't really matter, since human researchers were just as bad-worse even, because they usually didn't know what the hell they were doing. She considered putting the gun to her own head, and insisting they drop Jack off at an ER, but inside the narrow confines of a car they might be able to snatch it from her anyway.

"You're out of options," the shorter one said.

"I don't know about that," a voice interrupted. "Need a lift, Amish?"

Cassandra turned just a little and saw the biker boy from the coffee shop, holding up a sawed-off shotgun. He was half-concealed by Jack's smashed, burning SUV.

"Drop the guns and put your hands up," ordered the Polo giant.

He stepped right out of the smoke behind the agents with a large-caliber handgun raised in a very threatening manner. The agents exchanged glances.

"You want to live long enough to collect your pensions, you better obey the man," Bikerboy said.

The goons dropped their guns. Cassandra found herself scowling. Why was her gun waving dismissed? Blatant sexism. Polo giant trussed the goons up in less than a minute. He left them belly down on the sidewalk with zip ties linking their wrists linked to their ankles.

"Give him to me," Bikerboy growled right into her ear.

She startled so badly she fired her last bullet into the flaming car. She stumbled away from him, and pointed the gun. He didn't know it was empty.

"Who do you work for?" she asked.

"Nobody," Bikerboy said.

"I don't believe you," she said.

They weren't Go'auld either, but they were almost as scary as the suit-wearing goons.

"Then don't," he said. "Keep the gun if that makes you happy, but gimme the kid. You're about to drop him."

Cassandra was sure Jack would be very annoyed, not just that she nodded and handed him over to some armed weirdo who had come out of nowhere, but also at how easily said weirdo picked him up. She looked back and saw the Polo giant was following them, his hands full of wallets and guns he'd lifted off the agents he'd tied up.

She followed the Biker boy down the street and around the corner to a big black car. She was sure Jack would know the model and year just by looking. She'd just call it old. The Biker boy opened the back door, Jack hanging casually over his shoulder.

"Come on, Amish. Cars aren't that scary."

She climbed in and he handed Jack to her. He knelt and dragged a first aid kit out of under the passenger's seat. He pulled a knife from somewhere and sliced open Jack's pant leg. He pulled off the half-assed tourniquet and put a much more professional dressing on the wound.

"Put pressure on it. Keep his leg higher than his heart," he instructed before slamming the door and going around to the driver's seat.

The old car's engine roared. The Polo giant had barely closed the passenger door as they sped away. She and Jack slid around on the leather seats and she braced her feet against the door to keep them in place.

"Who do you work for?" she asked again.

"We're self-employed," the Biker boy said.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"St. Catherine's," the Polo giant said. "It's the closest E.R."

"Why were you following me?" she asked.

"A black SUV was following us, then it flipped a U-turn and roared off. We followed and saw your little Honduran stand-off," the Biker boy said.

"Don't you mean a Mexican standoff?" Cassandra found herself asking. She was sure she knew at least that much about pop culture.

"It's a Honduran stand-off if there are burning cars involved," the Biker boy said.

"He's messing with you," the Polo giant said. "Take the next exit."

Jack made a weird snorting sound, and then tried and failed to sit up.

"Jack?" she asked.

"Carter…take the GDO…get…the Gate…SG5…" Jack mumbled.

"Jack! Jack! Sam's not here. It's me, Cassie. We're in a car in Indiana. You got shot, remember?"

"Was kinda wondering why…y'hand's in my pants," he muttered, looking slightly more awake.

The Biker boy snickered, and Cassandra tensed. If he could hear that, he'd heard Jack's first statement as well, not that the acronyms gave much away.

"We're going to the hospital," she said loudly.

"No!" Jack said. "I recognized one of them….from th' rogue NID cells…must be more than one…they'll know to check…emergency rooms."

"I'm not letting you bleed to death!" Cassandra said. "The way this is gushing, it must've nicked an artery."

"This car's a '67? Cigarette lighter work?" Jack asked.

"No!" the Polo giant said. "We're almost there! No backseat surgery!"

"Aw come on, Sammy, you love backseat surgery," the Biker boy said. "This guy's a regular Dr. House with dental floss and an upholstery needle."

"Who are they?" Jack asked.

"I'm Dean. That's Sammy and we were gathering information for our conspiracy theory newsletter when we stumbled across you two."

Jack snorted. He tried to ask something else, but his whole body clenched up in pain and he couldn't get the words out.

"Jack! Jack! Jack!" Cassandra said.

"Hospital is coming up," the Polo giant, AKA Sammy, said.

The car's shocks creaked as he looped into the emergency entrance.

"Don't," Jack said. "Don't come in with me."

"I'm not going to leave you by yourself!" she insisted.

"Yes you are," Jack ordered. "You can't help, and if you come in, you could put other patients in danger."

She flinched. He waved her in closer and she put her ear by his mouth. His voice was low but sharp.

"If you can, ditch these yahoos. If not, get them to take you to Scott Air Force Base. Colonel Myrtlan…Mytol something like that has been read into the SGC program. Stay there until someone from SG1 comes to get you."

Cassandra nodded. She didn't like Jack's chain-of–command voice, though she really only heard him use it in life-or-death situations. She remembered him using it on then-Major Samantha Carter, ordering her to leave Cassandra at the bottom of a missile silo when they couldn't disarm the bomb a Go'auld had left in her chest.

_Jack uses that voice when someone is going to die. Even when he's going to die._

Before she could think on it further, Sammy yanked the door open and pulled Jack out of the car. Sammy must have twisted Jack's leg because he gave a choked-off yelp and went completely limp. The lights in the parking lot flickered and the car's radio snapped on.

She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her hands over her ears.

She tried counting backwards from a hundred, worried she would short out something Jack would need. She was barely to seventy when Sammy flung himself back into the car. She thought again about diving out, running inside and hoping the real police would show up and solve this, but then Dean stomped on the gas and she fell back against the seat.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"Somewhere we can talk," Dean said. "You're really rocking the Laura Croft look, by the way."

She looked down at herself and realized she was wearing one shoe, slacks, a bra, and a lot of blood. She looked around for her shirt-turned-tourniquet, but couldn't find it. She crossed her arms over her chest.

Sammy scowled at Dean and handed her back a tent-sized plaid shirt.

Dean muttered "spoil-sport" as they pulled into traffic, headed for the highway. She looked behind them, but didn't see anyone following. She held her gun between her knees as she put on the oversized shirt. One empty gun and two armed guys; she wondered what the hell kind of story would get her out of this. She had just decided to blame North Korea when Dean turned around.

"So are you a Gremlin?" he asked.

"What?" she asked.

"You know, a supernatural creature that destroys technology," Dean said.

She looked between the two men, hoping one of them would say they were joking. Neither did. She saw traffic slowing down at the approaching intersection.

_Screw this, I'm jumping._

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Author's Notes: Took me forever, I know. The delete key fell off my computer, making this even more of a challenge.


	6. Chapter 6

**Not Your Kind of Trouble**

**Chapter 6**

Dean was not entirely shocked when the girl tried to jump out at the stoplight. He was a little startled when she threw her full weight against the door as she pulled on the handle, and bounced off it to land in the foot-well with a shriek. He stomped on the accelerator before she tried to crawl out the window.

"Child-locks," Dean said. "Not standard on an Impala, but damn useful."

She got up with her gun in her hand, and Dean tapped the brakes just as she was aiming it. She tumbled against the front seat and Dean snatched the weapon from her hand as she flopped around. He ejected the clip, and saw it was empty.

"Let me out!" she demanded.

"Not just yet," Dean said.

He gave her a hard look. She gave him one right back, and the radio snapped on and howled.

"You mess with my car, I'm gonna take it personal. We're going to go somewhere more private and hash this out. Till then, lay off the electric mojo," Dean growled.

For the rest of the ride, the girl remained hunched and quiet. The Impala wove through the town. Dean kept his eyes on the mirrors, making sure no suspicious black SUV's had tailed them from the fight, and no cops had tailed them from the hospital. He didn't really know what they were going to do with the girl. She was dirty and soaked in her friend's blood, and she didn't smell too great, either. Dean didn't comment on that of course, because he was a nice guy, and because he feared for the Impala's spark plugs.

This case was getting worse by the minute. He was used to finding bodies, but a bunch of very dead, very cop-like guys who had bought it in very ordinary bullet-riddled ways made his stomach turn. It wasn't something supernatural that had ended those lives. It was either this girl, (and given her lack of skill with firearms, he wouldn't put money on it) or her teenage friend.

When he and Sam had disarmed and tied up the two surviving members of the suit-squad, the girl hadn't demanded they get rid of the witnesses or anything like that. She hadn't even tried to kick them, and didn't bother to ask them questions. So did that mean she knew what the suits wanted, or was she just so distracted by her bleeding friend, it just slipped her mind?

Dean got them a room on the back side of the Drowsy Bear Lodge, which didn't look like a lodge much at all, but could possibly have an unmotivated bear in place of a maid. The girl got out of the car when Sam opened her door for her. She shied away from the hand he tried to put on her elbow, but did allow herself to be shooed into the room with minimal fuss.

She stepped over the salt line Dean poured over the carpet, and ignored the protective sigils he'd scribbled out on the molding. Dean closed the door when they were all inside, and the girl got a startled look on her face, as if she only just now realized where she was.

"Who do you work for?" she demanded for the fifth time that night.

"Um…no one," Sam said.

"So no one just told you to track me down?" she said, putting her hands on her hips.

Sam shrank back a little under her glare.

"We don't take orders," Dean said. "It was all our own idea to walk into a shoot-out to save you and your boyfriend from that creepy government goon squad. A 'thank you' wouldn't go wrong here, Amish."

The girl deflated. "Thank you," she said. "And Jack is not my boyfriend."

"If you want, you can use the shower," Sam said after the gap in conversation had grown awkward. "I have some clothes you can borrow, though they're a little big."

"I'd like to know what you two are planning before I get naked, thanks," she snapped, and then winced. Her mouth was apparently a little faster than her brain. Dean understood that problem.

"We're paranormal investigators," Sam said, before Dean could offer up one of the hundreds of much better, less crazy cover-stories they had planned. "We thought there might be evidence of a poltergeist at the University."

The girl looked somewhat baffled. "What, like 'Ghost Hunters' from the SciFi Channel?"

"Yeah," Dean said. "Except we're not on TV and we don't get paid."

"And you thought I was a ghost?" she asked with obvious skepticism. "You said gremlin before."

"Ghosts cause electromagnetic interference," Sam said. "Dean was doing a sweep of the campus near where unusual incidents had been reported over the last week. You set off our EMF detector, so we were curious."

"I'm guessing you've noticed I'm solid and not dead and everything?" she said. "So what do you want?"

_We want to know if we have to gank you before you kill someone_, Dean thought. _Or kill someone without using a gun, because otherwise you're the cops' problem._

"We know you aren't a ghost," Sam said. "But you aren't …I mean…you have something not quite normal going on. We just want to know what's happening."

She scowled. "I can't talk about it. I've signed a non-disclosure agreement."

_That's a first._ "With who?" Dean asked.

"With the United States Air Force," she said.

Dean looked at Sam, who just shook his head.

"If the Air Force is on your side, why are the men in black after you?" Dean asked.

"They aren't the men in black. They're agents of the N.I.D." she said.

"N.I.D. instead of M.I.B., that clears everything up," Dean said.

"National Intelligence Department," she said. "They were supposed to be civilian oversight for secret high-tech military projects the Air Force was working on. A bunch of them decided they'd rather steal the tech and sell it on the black market. They got found out; a few were caught, most of them scattered to avoid arrest. They pop up and cause trouble when the Air Force and NSA are busy with bigger problems."

"So your buddy meant it literally when he told you to go to an Air Force base?" Dean asked.

"You've got good hearing," she said with a scowl.

"Metallica sharpens the senses," Dean said. "But the Air Force? Really?"

"My guardian works for them and my mother did too, before she was killed in action," She said. "Jack knows who to go to if I can't get through to my contacts. He's been out of the loop for a while, but if he says Scott Air Force Base is my best shot, that's where I'm going."

"What's up with that kid, anyway?" Dean asked. "He some kind of tiny government assassin or something?"

"Or something." she said. "Jack got booted out of his program because his age made people nervous. I can't give you details."

Dean's mind flashed to the dead men in suits, scattered among the wrecked SUV's. He wondered if the kid was on super-steroids. That would make losing a fight to him easier to take.

"Another non-disclosure agreement?" Dean asked.

"No, I just don't want him pissed at me," she replied.

Sam fiddled with his bag for a minute. "How about off the record? Can you tell us hypothetically what might be causing those EMF spikes and why those men might be after you? It might be important to have some theories, so we know what to expect on the way to Scott Air Force Base."

Dean scowled, but now that Sam had pretty much promised, they'd have to drive her to friggin Illinois. His brother was just getting too into his good cop role. He watched Sam for another minute and felt himself frowning. Sam was giving the girl THAT look. Not just the sympathy-that-should-be-fake-but-wasn't-really look, but the I-want-to-hear-your-life-story-and-then-buy-a-hous e-together look.

"There are no ghosts involved," she said.

Dean waved for her to continue. She fidgeted for a few seconds, and Dean was pretty sure she was trying to work out a good lie in her head before saying it out loud.

"Someone might have altered brain physiology that lets them do weird electromagnetic…stuff if they were experimented on by a mad scientist who was trying to make 'superior' humans. In theory, the Air Force might have dealt with this kind of thing before, and might be able to help them out, before their brain melts down," she said. "Or they knock out the power grid, or something."

Dean shot Sam a do-you-believe-her look. His brother shrugged. He knew some of that story had to be a lie.

"A mad scientist?" Dean asked.

The girl nodded. If that was true, it would put her outside of the yellow-eyed demon's psychic freak show, even if her age hadn't already made that unlikely. Then again, the bastard might have just dressed the part. It wasn't like M.D.s were immune to possession.

"So how'd that work?" Dean asked, affecting a sneer. "Some guy in a lab coat just dragged you into the back of a van and stuck your head in a microwave?"

She scowled and forgot all about the theoretical defense. "She infected my whole town with a genetically engineered virus. I was still alive when the USAF arrived. Lucky me," she said. "Some Air Force personnel tracked the scientist down and my…new mom put a gun to her head. The scientist cooked up something that deactivated the virus, or temporarily deactivated it. I don't know. The last time this happened I had a fever that was melting my brain and shutting down my organs. I don't feel great at the moment, but I'm not running a fever."

Dean saw Sam's arm twitch, as if he were going to reach out and put a hand on her forehead.

"Is it contagious?" Dean asked.

"I don't think so," she said. "They checked before I was allowed to leave the base, and I went in for screenings every month for two years after. The virus was totally inactive and my MRI's were normal. Everything was normal. The N.I.D. must have gotten access to my files. I don't think they can get the virus from me, but I doubt that will stop them from sawing off the top of my skull and giving it their best try," she said.

Dean mulled that over. A demon might give in to demands to avoid exorcism, like the crossroads-skank had, but they did not worry about normal guns waved by adopted parents. If that goon squad had been planning to slice and dice the girl, Dean was going to have to cut her tiny assassin some slack as well. Human or not, if someone came after Sam like that… He looked over at his little brother, who was watching the girl.

"You said the scientist infected your whole town. Were you the only one who survived?" Sam asked.

She nodded eventually. Her hands were clenched around the rolled cuffs of her borrowed shirt.

"The scientist who did this to you," Sam asked, "Was she human?"

The girl twitched. She'd be terrible at poker. Hunters had always suspected the government knew more about the supernatural than they let on. Most of them cynically assumed the Feds were happy to let regular people take all the risks and all the blame when freaky shit hit the fan. Dean wondered if this girl was proof that the government, at least the military, took a more active role against the bigger players. Dean was pretty sure demons would sit around and laugh themselves stupid during a nuclear war. Jumping into a guy with his finger on the red button wouldn't be that hard.

"Well, what else could she be?" she asked.

"I don't know," Dean said. "A demon, maybe?"

"Demons aren't real," she said.

"Then why are you so jumpy?" Dean asked.

"Well I'm alone in a hotel with a couple of lunatics who believe in Demons, obviously!" she said shrilly. The lights flickered.

"Cassandra!" Sam said. "Please calm down!"

Sam gave her full-strength puppy-dog eyes and the lamps stopped threatening to explode. Dean looked between them, and got a little worried about the intensity of their eye contact. So soon after the thing with Madison, he didn't want his brother getting too fond of another freak of the week.

"So if we told you we'd come across some vicious bastards who experimented on kids, had freaky eyes, and could fling you across the room by waving their hands, you'd say 'That's impossible' and that we're crazy," Dean said.

She froze, statue still. "When…?" she started to ask. "No. It's not possible. They're on the lookout for that kind of thing. It must be something else."

"Sorry to burst your bubble, princess, but _they_ are doing a half-assed job at best. Maybe your people helped cover it up, but they sure as hell weren't on the ground with us fighting them," Dean said.

"So you're ghost hunters and demon fighters now?" she scoffed. "Next you'll take out your PhD's in genetics, right? I don't need an…an exorcist. I need a doctor. And why are you getting mixed up in this, anyway? What were you planning to do if I was a demon or a gremlin or a bigfoot?"

"We never said bigfoot," Sam muttered.

Dean blew out a breath, trying not to chew her out for dragging her bitchy armor back on. He was pretty sure she wouldn't believe him if he said they just wanted to help people. Telling her that they were on a mission to rid the world of supernatural evil probably wouldn't win her over either. Whatever it was she thought she knew was getting in the way of that explanation anyway. From the way she reacted to the human question, Dean was sure she knew about demons, or had run into them before. She hadn't stuck the right name on them, but why would she if _mad scientist_ was less mind-bending than _monster from hell_? He wondered what stupid name had been assigned to demons in the super-secret government files; Post-terrestrials instead of extraterrestrials maybe? Whatever the government had done for her in the past it seemed obvious they weren't doing much for her now.

"You want to deal with this on your own? Fine, the door is right over there," Dean said, trying to snap her out of her delusions of self-sufficiency.

Dean cursed his attempt at reverse psychology as she gave him a wary look and started towards it. Sam got in her way before Dean had to.

"Cassandra, please we _are_ trying to help you," Sam said, dialing the puppy-eyes up to eleven. "I understand what you're going through."

_Oh crap_, Dean thought. _He can't be that stupid_. No way would his brother admit to the-government-is-my-friend-girl that he has a brain that would be just as fun to dissect.

"Something happened to me, too," Sam blathered on. "I have-"

"Herpes," Dean interrupted. "Just because you're talking about a virus doesn't make that story sympathetic. It's just gross."

Sam and Cassandra both stood frozen, gawking at him. Dean smirked, feeling he had accomplished his mission on two fronts. Sam's face flushed bright red.

"WHAT THE HELL, DEAN?" Sam shouted.

He lunged at Dean and tried to punch his arm, but missed as Dean hopped back and rolled across one of the beds to keep out of his brother's reach. Sam grabbed the first item he found, the TV remote, and threw it at him, but Dean caught it with a smirk. They both started as the door slammed. Dean relaxed when he saw Cassandra Frasier was still standing inside the room with her hand on the knob.

"Well, you've convinced me that you're not N.I.D. agents or professional hit men, at least," Cassandra said. "You might still be really stupid mercenaries."

"Says the chick who was making threats with an empty gun," Dean said.

"What-" Sam paused, face still red, but no longer shaking with embarrassment and rage. "What would convince you that we're trying to help?"

"You could tell me the truth."

"We did," Dean growled. "Mostly. Anything else?"

"You could go make a couple of phone calls."

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Dean glared at the sticky pay phone as yet another of Cassandra's emergency contact numbers took him through a phone-tree and eventually dumped him in an anonymous voicemail box. He left his fifth message of the evening, and used the code words she'd written down for him, though using "quarks" surreptitiously was much harder than dropping "funky town" into a conversation.

They had watched the news for a couple of hours on the motel's fuzzy little television. The shootout was mentioned, but the reporter had no details, and just a few long-distance shots of the wrecked SUV's. Sam's picture hadn't come up on the screen and they hadn't mentioned Jack or any of the other casualties from the incident. Dean had walked over to a deli and got them all chips and sandwiches, and had holy-watered the girl's Snapple. She had passed that test, too.

He really did not want to leave her alone with Sam, but he couldn't come up with any more excuses that made sense. She seemed to have made the decision to stick with them, but it was pretty obvious she was only there because she had no other choice. He did not get a chance to remind his brother that telling the girl their life story would be a bad idea, so he hoped Sam had taken the hints he had thrown at him. It was almost ten when Dean finally went out to make the calls.

He'd hotwired a slightly beat up 83' Mercury Marquis and driven a few miles from their motel in case the N.I.D. goons were tracking phone calls going out to military bases, even from their burner phones. He didn't know how they could do that, but Cassandra seemed to think it was possible. She was as close as they had to an expert on creepy government surveillance for the moment. Until he could contact Ash, he grudgingly let her make that call. He was even less happy about leaving the Impala behind, but somebody had to have seen them pull up to the emergency room, and his baby was hard to forget.

Once he was well away from Sam and his we-must-help-her look, his mind started dragging up reasons to ditch this case. Cassandra was not a fugly as far as he could tell and her brain-virus-powers didn't seem to affect humans, just their high-tech junk. The Winchester brothers were already on the FBI's most wanted list. He didn't want to add them to the NSA's list of people-to-disappear. He really hoped someone nearby would be willing to take this mess off his hands. His instinct for self-, and more importantly Sam- preservation rapidly lost ground to frustration as the phone calls went nowhere.

Phone call number six went to an answering machine. The machine was old enough that he could hear the tape click on and a deep and slightly wavering voice with a Texan drawl told him he'd reached George, and that he should know what to do next.

"I'm calling on behalf of Cassandra, and this is starting to piss me off. A bunch of freaks in suits have been trying to kidnap her, her friend Jack's been shot in the leg, and apparently no one in the entire freaking Air Force is at work today. Are you all on strike or something? Quark you."

Dean slammed the phone down and got back into the car. He cruised the town for a bit, keeping an eye out for more SUVs. He avoided the industrial area where the shooting had taken place, since there was no way to get a good look without being both obvious and suspicious. He found himself circling by the hospital and eventually parked.

Dean decided that since he didn't have a message from her Air Force friends to convince her of his good will, he could at least bring her some news about Jack the tiny assassin. He noticed a few extra cops lurking around the place, but they weren't at every entrance. He didn't have much trouble getting inside the building, and a few picked pockets and a trip through the service staff lockers got him access to everything short of the operating rooms. He found the room Jack had been moved to, and was plotting out how to wander casually past when he heard an indignant squawk.

"That's insane! We don't have enough staff for that. We definitely don't have the overtime budget."

Dean peered around the corner and saw a dark skinned man in a suit and trench coat looming over a short skinny woman in an expensive looking pantsuit. Dean guessed she was some kind of high up administrator. Dean could only see the back of the man's shaved head but there was something familiar about him.

"The Winchesters are psychotic serial killers," the man said. "They could try to shoot their way in here at any moment."

"Well that sounds like something the police should be helping you with," the woman said. "My staff wouldn't be able to deal with a serial killer anyway, Mr. Henricksen."

"That's Agent Henricksen," the man corrected.

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**Author's Note**: Six re-writes later and I think I have the Winchester's ghosts are real spiel the way I want it.


	7. Chapter 7

Not Your Kind of Trouble

Chapter 7

Agent Victor Henricksen had sandpaper under his eyelids. He paced in front of the nurses' station. If he sat down, he knew he would fall asleep. He scrubbed at his face and then ran a hand over his shaved head, annoyed at the little prickles of stubble.

He had been up for 27 hours when the call came in through the tip line. He had phoned his partner and his supervisor, neither of whom were pleased that he called from his car, on the way to the airport, instead of waiting for their presence, or in the case of his supervisor, permission. Reedy would get over it, and SSA Groves couldn't do much about it. He could threaten to give the Winchester case to another agent, but there was no one else dumb enough to take it.

Henricksen had not been able to sleep on the plane, and it was only 90 minutes in the air, anyhow. He spent the time studying the latest Winchester crime scene on his laptop. At first, it seemed like some kind of spy deal gone wrong: three wrecked SUV's, four corpses, two other gunshot victims-nearly bled out-and two men unharmed and bound in zip ties. All eight of them were wearing black suits and carrying fake government I.D. The two live and conscious ones refused to talk, even to lawyer up. They were such cliché secret agents that the local PD had checked them for suicide pills. It was the kid who linked this mess to Henricksen's. It was the kid who fit least of all.

The police might not have connected the kid to the shootout, except that they found his backpack with his student I.D. in it in the front seat of one of the wrecked SUV's at the crime scene. Jonathan O'Neill was a sixteen-year-old emancipated minor, with no reason to be in the area. He also exactly matched the description of a John Doe dumped at a nearby emergency room. The Winchesters might have been overlooked, except a triage nurse in St. Catherine's E.R. had recognized Sam Winchester from the news broadcasts after he and his brother escaped from prison.

Most people did not make the link between vacant-eyed booking photos and a living, breathing person next to them on the bus. He supposed having the younger Winchester toss an unconscious bleeding teenager onto her desk made the right kind of impression.

He went straight to St. Catherine's from the airport. The local police were halfway through processing the wrecked vehicles and the scene would be too crowded and cluttered. He had warned them the Winchesters might return to it, but his attention was focused on the surviving civilian witness.

Henricksen wished they would let him in the room to shake the kid. The doctors expected O'Neill to wake up soon. They had operated on the kid's leg and sewed up an artery. The boy's surgeon said he might have bled out if the Winchesters had not slapped a tourniquet on him and brought him in so fast. Henricksen had felt obligated to point out that the kid would not have had to go anywhere fast, had the Winchesters not frigging shot him. He was stuck with a hospital lawyer as a go-between after that. He supposed he should have asked them for extra security before calling them a bunch of incompetent pill pushers.

Henricksen needed to know what those two maniacs were after. He had told the locals to keep an eye on the cemeteries, but even under normal circumstances they did not have the manpower to keep a close watch on them all. They sure as hell didn't when there was a fake spy convention in town. The local police chief, Andrew Foss, had freed up a few interns to search records for Henricksen, but that was about as far as his cooperation went without more official paperwork.

He gave them instructions over the phone, determined not to leave the hospital until he could interview the kid. They'd called him with a few updates in the meantime. His loaner interns had not found anything particularly odd in the local police reports, or even the newspapers recently, except for some vandalism at the University, and O'Neill was not a student there. Henricksen also had them look up Chief Foss' history, just to make sure he had never served with the Winchester's daddy in 'Nam or some other damn thing.

He was about to call a nurse back to check on the kid again when the elevators opened and a uniformed police officer stepped out. The man was Caucasian, middle-aged without a paunch, and just over six feet tall. The officer gave the hallways and nurses' station a quick once over before approaching.

"You agent Henricksen?" he asked. He got close enough for Henricksen to read "Stanton" stitched on the officer's left shirt pocket.

The agent nodded.

"Chief Foss sent me to get the vic's clothes," Stanton said. "He also said Dr Burket, our M.E,. is flipping his shit over something he found in the pre-autopsy X-rays. The doc insisted there be witnesses when he opened up one of them, though he was pretty shifty about why. Chief thought you might want in on it. I can send the clothes with you and guard the kid until the detectives and the rest of the Feds get here."

Henrickson thought for a moment, exhaustion warring with logic. He did not really want to watch a stiff get carved up, but he was just spinning his wheels here, waiting on the kid. He sized up Stanton again. The man seemed competent.

"Yeah, that sounds good. Just remember the Winchesters have all kinds of fake I.D.s, so nobody gets in there unless you check their face. If they do show up, it's a shoot first, think of a reason later kind of situation, got it?"

"Yes, sir," Stanton said.

Henricksen took the elevator down to see the hospital legal team again and signed out the clothes. The drive to the police station seemed to take longer than the plane ride, with four-way stops at every intersection.

Foss had a pot of tar-like coffee bubbling away as Henricksen walked into his office. A crime scene tech, who had been lurking by the door, took the bag and his signature. The police chief got up from a paper-cluttered desk to shake his hand. He was a big guy, with thick dark hair, olive skin, and pock-scarred cheeks. Henricksen couldn't decide if the man was Italian or Indian. Either way, Foss didn't match up with his name.

"Well this is a hell of a thing, isn't it?" Foss asked.

"When the Winchesters are involved, it can only get worse," Henricksen said.

"You sure they're the ones responsible?" Foss asked. "The forensics guys at the scene tell me the SUV's were ramming each other like bumper cars all up and down that street, but they haven't come across a single bit of '67 Chevy."

"They once took over a bank robbery from the bank robber," Henricksen said. "Even if they didn't start this, they've done everything in their power to make it worse."

The police chief did not look convinced, but gave a half-hearted nod. "We've got the survivors in lock up. You can try talking to them if you want, but I don't think they have much to say. We can meet down in autopsy after."

The chief was very right about his prisoners. The two men, who had been stripped of their suits and given pink coveralls instead, sat stubborn and silent, each in his own little cell. They were unmoved by Henricksen's pleas and threats, and seemed unconvinced when he told them he didn't give two shits about them as long as he caught the Winchesters.

Henricksen took the elevator down to the morgue to look at the new "James Bond" collection. According to the initial investigators, none of the dead men had any satanic markings or filed teeth or any of the other crazy kinky shit that attracted the Winchester brothers. The local police had already collected all the clothes, weapons and miscellany. All of it was untraceable. Where was the freak angle? The doors slid open and the stench of antiseptic and rotting bowels poured in.

"Oh, thank God!" shouted a man in a red-spattered plastic apron. "I need you to look at this and tell me I'm not nuts."

_This might be it_, Henricksen thought as he dodged the man's grasping, bloody hands.

"Look at what?" he asked.

"One of the Men in Black from the shoot out-he has a goddamn snake in his head."

"Don't scare the man, Burket," Foss said, as he came in from another hallway, another forensic tech in a white clean suit following behind him with a large camera hanging around his neck.

"You said you'd bring witnesses," Burket said.

"Josh is gonna take pictures of the whole thing," Foss said, tilting his head toward the cameraman. "But everyone else is up to his or her eyeballs with all the other evidence."

The M.E. scowled and then went back into the cold exam room. Henricksen followed. He stayed as far back as possible from the body. He wasn't really squeamish, but he had not packed another suit, and he didn't want to be stuck wearing his pajamas the next day if fluids started flying everywhere.

Burket showed them all the X-rays he'd taken to locate the bullets before he started cutting. The other three corpses were pretty normal, though one had another piece of bullet lodged near his spine from an older, healed-over gunshot wound. Man number four, though, was something else.

The snake, or the skeleton of the snake, shined through the film on the backlit board on the wall. The thing was long and skinny, and though most of it was curled up in the skull, the tail hung down along the cervical vertebrae.

"So how'd they shove that thing in there?" Foss asked.

"It wasn't shoved anywhere," Burket said. "I've checked the entire body. Aside from the track of the bullet that killed him, this man had no recent injuries. No one put that snake in there, not in the last few months at least. That man was alive and walking around with it in his brain."

Burket changed his bloody apron and gloves for a clean set and picked up a little circular saw.

"Should we call the CDC or something, maybe?" Josh, the cameraman, asked. "Or a zoologist? That doesn't look like a normal snake."

"He may have a point," Foss said. "Any chance this thing is contagious?"

"How could a snake be contagious?" Burket asked, more than a little snidely.

"Maybe it's not a snake," Josh said. "Maybe it's some kind of brain tapeworm."

"Tapeworms don't have skeletons," Burket said. "And which of us is the expert in this field?"

"You aren't a parasitologist," Josh said. "And this isn't a good idea. Chief Foss, I'm not going to do this. You can fire me if you want, but I'm leaving. I've seen this movie before. You're all going to get brain tapeworms."

Henricksen looked over at the X-ray again, and it looked less like a snake than it had the first time. He did not think he was susceptible to mass hysteria, but as the Chief started to catch the tech's nervousness, he did, too.

"The CDC might not be a bad idea," Henricksen said. "Or at least a biohazard suit or something."

"Yeah, hold up there, Doc," Foss said. "Put him back in the fridge for now. We'll run it by county health first."

Burket glared at the Chief, his expression betrayed. Eventually he obeyed. Henricksen shrugged it off and headed back to the elevator. The chief caught up to him before the car arrived.

"Those Winchester boys ever do anything like that? Stuff a snake in a corpse?" he asked. "That wasn't in any of the files, but not all of them were specific."

Henricksen just shook his head. He didn't want to admit that the tech's fear had affected him. It wasn't like there was a rush. If the snake had been in the dead man's head for a while, taking it out probably wouldn't help them catch the Winchesters any faster.

"I'm going back to the hospital," Henricksen said, just as his phone buzzed. The Chief's cell rang at the same time. With dread building in his chest, Henricksen answered.

"This is Gerald Lee, head of security at St. Catherine's Hospital. Jack O'Neill is missing from his room, and half our cameras have stopped working."

The drive back to the hospital was a blur. He followed behind a squad car with its sirens wailing. He was nearly attached to its bumper, blowing though every light. It didn't matter. They were too late. They found Officer Stanton, alive but drugged, in a hospital room down the hall from the one he had been guarding.

Winchester had taken down half the security cameras, and for the most part stayed out of range of the rest, but one camera had caught sight of him, dressed in janitor's coveralls, pushing a cart down a hall. There was no sound to accompany the footage, but Henricksen could read the cocky bastard's lips: he could practically read his mind.

Winchester stopped to talk to a pretty patient as she leaned out the door of her room. He grinned and gave her a wink, and the woman in her hospital gown and robe tilted her head and fiddled with her hair. She was so focused on Winchester's smile she didn't notice the arm that flopped out of the bottom shelf of the cart. The arm moved slightly, fingers twitching. Winchester said something that made the woman throw her head back and laugh. She never saw him casually push the arm back under cover with the toe of his boot. After a few more moments of flirting, he pushed the cart into motion again. He disappeared from the frame, but the woman stayed in her doorway for a full minute, apparently enjoying the rear view.

"What are the odds we'll find that kid alive?" Foss asked as he waved for the security guard to play the footage again.

Henricksen did not answer. He did not think he could answer without exploding. He had warned them and asked for extra guards and again he had been ignored. The police shouldn't be asking if they'd find the kid. They should be asking how many pieces they'd find him in. Henricksen swore again that this would be the last time Winchester got away. When he caught up to him, he didn't care if the man surrendered. He'd find an excuse.


End file.
